Freedom (2010)

"'I'm guessing that you've already had the opportunity to be frustrated with people who aren't as bright as you are. People who are not only unable but unwilling to admit certain truths whose logic is self-evident to you. Who don't even seem to care that their logic is bad. Have you never been frustrated that way?'

"'But that's because they're free... Isn't that what freedom is for? The right to think whatever you want? I mean, I admit, it's a pain in the ass sometimes.'"

What is the price of freedom? What horrible compromises must be made in order to make gains in this world? The characters of Jonathan Franzen's latest novel, Freedom, find themselves continuously faced with the necessity of compromise in order to achieve their goals. It's a family drama in which the patriach, the almost tirelessly idealistic Walter Berglund, finds himself working for a giant, earth-destroying (and war profiteering) corporation in order to preserve some small portion of land as a nature sanctuary; the matriarch, Patty, finds herself forced to choose between the sexual satisfaction she might find with Walter's best friend, Richard, and the satisfaction she feels in every other respect with Walter and which she knows she could never find with Richard; their son, Joey, must find a way to reconcile his vision of himself as a freewheeling, self-made playboy with his love for his childhood sweetheart and a rather inconvenient sense of guilt over how he will make his fortune.

Franzen moves back and forth between various perspectives and styles of narration. The novel opens with an overview of the Berglunds from the outside, as they are seen by their neighbors. It then shifts to a much more interrior view through an autobiography written by Patty (to which it will return near the end) and then shifts again, offering chapters from the perspective of Walter, Joey, and Richard. Franzen is ultimately able to paint a very expansive picture of this one particular family, getting deep into their psyches and exposing all the natural cracks that can (and perhaps inevitably will) occur in human relationships.

Freedom has already long since been praised to the heavens as a masterwork, though to be honest its reputation is what made me wait so long to pick it up. After all, how could any book live up to that much hype? But, having now read it, I have to say that it is worthy of all that ppraise. It isn't a flawless book - I felt that the Berglund's daughter, Jessica, was woefully underrepresented - but between Franzen's finely wrought dissection of the minutiae of interpersonal conflicts and his exquisite prose, it's an excellent novel that you won't want to put down.